Beloved
by Mushroom Wonderland
Summary: The science of silence is a lover's beating heart. Serena/Stanton.


**Disclaimer: **I don't own _Daughters Of The Moon_.  
**Rating: **T for sexuality and swearing.  
**Summary: **Brief snippets of Serena's relationship with Stanton.

* * *

_.the science of silence is a lover's beating heart. _

* * *

Serena was not particularly "lonely."

In fact, hers was a blessed life. Charming in nature, honey-sweet in its divinity. Her father, albeit prone to absence, was a _good_ man. Single father, neatly-pressed suits and suitcases smelling of new leather; a warm smile. Her brother, although not as entirely presentable as their father, was crafted from iron and wood, and both men were _never_ cornered by challenges, and amongst those challenges had been a child, frightened by the dark while curiously fascinated by its secrets... And motherless. Dad was her foundation while Collin was her _home_. Indeed the support was necessary, but the structure was the result, a reward worth loving.

Serena was never lonely.

Jimena had been a more than welcomed presence — after all one can't remain best friends with their older brother forever — and fiercer than Collin or her father, and yet vulnerable in the core of her soul (although she'd never _dare_ admit it). Serena was enchanted by her new friend's wisdom; the surprising purity of her thoughts, always human and expressive, even in spite of how gruffly she spoke, or how wounded her heart was.

Friendship and family were Serena's truest comrades, the meteor shower illuminating an expanse of black night. Mom gathered her belongings (as well as her shame) and escaped into the cool night, and Dad retreated into his bedroom; collected their bedsheets and tossed them in the trashcan, although Serena once caught him playing with a woman's blouse — silky and royal blue — during a stormy evening. Collin, once keen on lazy Saturday afternoons with his loudmouthed, rowdy friends, invited her to the local park.

"I'll show you tricks on the monkey bars," he explained gleefully, but he had thought, _I wish Mom was here too_. She nodded at his statement, although she would never confirm to him it was his unspoken one. After all, why else had mother left than to shake off the chains of a bizarre, terrifying child with a secret in her smile and a knowing stare?

… Sometimes, however, the emptiness of outer space was lovelier than the constellations and nebulae occupying the darkness. It tempered her anxieties, reassured her there was emptiness _somewhere _— a place where thoughts, her own or those of her loved ones and of strangers, were not permitted.

Serena has always been _alone_.

Alone with secrets — confessions, impassioned pleas, prayers, lies — each of whom marred the chambers of her mind. Everybody _lied_. Everybody cowered within the depths of their psyche. Everybody loved themselves. Every pitied themselves.

And yet nobody came to understand their consciousness was as alive as their beating hearts.

* * *

Serena greeted Stanton normally — if normality was a possible destination for the dynamic of their interactions — and he, too, feigned politeness. She wasn't certain of the nature of their meeting. It was accidental, a casual run-in with an "acquaintance" in MacArthur Park. She had always found "serendipity" to be a strange word.

He called her Goddess as if it was her rightful name. (_Was it?_)

"My name's Serena."

He quipped an eyebrow, parted his lips, but never spoke aloud. The momentary bewilderment swiftly fell back in favor of smugness, one carefully designed for foolish girls such as herself. _I'll be sure to remember it next time. Good luck. _

They separated, but the forgotten friendliness of saying, "Goodbye" left a funny churning in her stomach.

_ Also, _Serena_... Try not to blush as much next time._

She refused him a final glance of her rosy pink face.

* * *

_It was an accident_, she swore, folding her arms across her chest while stepping away from him. _A stupid mistake._

He agreed.

They stood against the farthest corner of Planet Bang while spaced a few feet apart from one another. Their mutual embarrassment was palpable; a suffocating heat swelled in her cheeks and ears. In spite of the thrum of techno beats, all she could listen to was the vibration of her heartbeat within her veins. She was a paper crane afire.

"I apologize," he finally spoke, his eyes — a shade darker than their usual crystalline blue — trained upon the grimy floor. She suppressed a smile – he resembled a dog remorseful of its shameful actions. "That wasn't appropriate."

She agreed.

"It was nice though." He offered little scraps for the silly girl who took his games too far; too seriously. "Well, for what it's worth..."

_My first kiss_, she lamented pitifully. Should she cackle at the absurdity of the scenario or weep for her lack of tactful judgment? Frankly she should have calculated the hazards of journeying closer to a Follower in an area further away from public scrutiny. _I kissed a Follower_.

He coughed pointedly, attempting to deviate her attention away from her seemingly pathetic musing, and halfheartedly joked, "You wouldn't be the first Daughter to kiss a Follower."

"I know. I'm friends with Vanessa."

"That was different," he countered, clearly vexed by the curtness of her remark. "I was _using_ her."

Her impatience with the situation festered at his comment. "What do you mean?" she asked — her tone was a command, and yet she was trembling with the awakening of a virginal ecstasy. _Why'd you kiss me then? _

Although her inquiry was bold, if not illogical in its execution — they were enemies and they would remain enemies — she was all too taken by the enthralling aspect of kissing him one more time; to fully experience it, to not _think_ about it. She craved the stillness of a passionate kiss; how mouths melded in films, nimble fingers playing with the fabric of a lover's shirt. Theirs had been awkward, impulsive, and subsequently shortened by their respective understanding of one another: she was a Daughter of the Moon and he was a Follower.

"I — " Selling his words short, he closed the space between them and kissed her mouth again; his right hand cupped her face while the left clutched her hips. She melted instantly into his embrace, all too welcoming of how he smelt of soap and clove cigarettes, and the heat radiating from his body was magnetic. He was genuinely delighted by her eagerness — mirroring the tenderness from which she blossomed.

_You're pretty_, he answered telepathically while grazing her tongue with his own. _I think you're pretty. _She gasped lightly, though it was much more from how he gently bit her bottom lip than the bluntness of his compliment.

* * *

"You're really stupid, you know that?" Jimena snapped, hopping off Serena's bed and marching across the room so as to distance herself (seemingly from her own anger).

Serena frowned, her fingers digging into the blanket. "I — "

"Guys want you _so_ bad, but you hook up with _Stanton_?" The clairvoyant goddess massaged her temple for the umpteenth time. "_¡Idiota!_"

"I like him and he likes me."

Jimena, eyes widening wildly, scoffed. "Is that what that _pendejo_ told you? He's using you, _Serenita_. You remember what he did to Vanessa. And Catty was – "

"This is different." Serena, scowling at her own response, sighed heavily, slid from the bed, and approached her best friend — her eyes, wet with the brimming of tears, were enough to cool Jimena's outrage, for she softened her own expression and shook her head sadly. The telepath added, "I know it sounds stupid and... _really_ dumb, but... I like him a lot. He lets me read his mind. And with him telepathy is a _choice_."

Jimena's eyes narrowed into slits. "What does _that_ mean?"

"I don't have to hear his thoughts or he doesn't even have to hear _mine_, and everything's _quiet_. It feels free."

Jimena furrowed her brow, her mind ringing with the turmoil of tangled thoughts and sheer confusion. "I don't get it."

"I don't either," Serena admitted in a small voice, all too preoccupied with the memory of their prior meet up. He had called her beautiful, elaborated on the integrity of her character, and sent words to echo across the landscape of her conscience – the experience was more sensual than anything she could have imagined. He, too, had been swept away by the sheer poetry of their telepathic chemistry — kissing her mouth, her cheek, her collarbone, ruffling her hair with his breath... Her girlish enthusiasm quivered impatiently at their lack of contact in the past three days.

Jimena, extending her hand and resting it upon Serena's shoulder, said, "It's not smart, Serena. You can't trust him. I don't really understand the telepathy _mierda_, but what you're doing is... _wrong_."

"I know."_ I know nobody understands telepathy... _

The world was eternally unforgiving of a telepath's privacy. Everybody sneered at the absence of privacy in a telepath's presence, but nobody understood the cost was the robbery of a telepath's own peace of mind.

* * *

She had concluded her decision the moment they could no longer contain the friction between their bodies. In his apartment — as the sun slumbered and moonlight illuminated the dimness of the room — they would become carried away in their hunger. The thick fragrance of sex (however, they had yet to _truly_ consummate their relationship), clothing clinging to skin which was peppered in sweat, heavy petting, and stifled moans.

The couch — once deemed their "neutral zone," an object angled toward a television screen — was no longer safe from their mutual cravings.

Their chemical fuse was a ticking time bomb. _I'll explode_, she pondered in the throes of lust. _I'm a collapsing star. _

_ Always the poet_, he had teased before carrying her to his bed.

Sometimes she would dazzle herself — or he would; it became a favorite of his — with memories of other sexual encounters while engaged in lovemaking, and she'd arch and grasp at the air and gasp as the memories flooded her to the core. Toes curling, legs bending, fingers stroking flushed red skin.

Telepathic intimacy was _supreme_.

After they finished she'd deliberate the stillness of time, how _quiet_ everything became when they mentally intertwined. Even during midnight strolls she'd find herself fascinated by how deeply she loved him — how whimsically she opened up like a flower.

* * *

They cultivated their relationship from the ashes of an ancient animosity. Serena had grown into womanhood amongst the bits and pieces of her love for Stanton, for her family, and for her friends. Perhaps distancing herself from her friends hadn't been wise; however, she had chosen her legacy as a Dark Goddess. Her end was nearing as was theirs.

"Catty will ascend," Serena said while cuddling with Stanton in their now shared bedroom. She wasn't home as often and no reassurance could quell Collin's fury at the idea. "Vanessa will forget. Tianna will ascend too. She loves Derek, but she'll never be at peace. And Vanessa loves Michael too much to leave him."

Stanton traced a fingertip down her arm.

"I want to go too," she continued in a whisper, "even though it's scary."

He tensed. "Go? I thought — "

"Even as a Dark Goddess, I'm still going _somewhere_," she explained, nestling closer to him. "I don't fully understand it yet, but... I have an idea."

"And what's that?"

She sighed to herself before saying, "Somewhere quiet and peaceful. Yeah, it's quiet. I can hear myself think there."

"I know what you mean." He sighed heavily. "Everybody thinks too loudly."

She rolled her shoulders into a shrug. "I _used_ to think that, actually. But now I think I was more scared of the darkness in their minds than just the thoughts. But I'll be a Dark Goddess. I _am_ a Dark Goddess.

I think it was never about shutting people out, but embracing them for all of their chaos and beauty — the dark and the light. It's quiet when everything has found its balance."

He never responded, she never peered into his mind, but even the silence between them, she could hear his acceptance of her words.

* * *

"Why'd you stay?"

"I love you. I loved how still earth was when we were together there."


End file.
